Gibbons plan ahead to beat competitors to the best breakfast spots

Life Skywalker gibbons rememb...

Life

Skywalker gibbons remember the locations of the most desirable foods and set off earlier when they want to eat fruit for breakfast

By Soumya Sagar

A male skywalker gibbon

Pengfei Fan

Gibbons get up early when they want fruit for breakfast, showing a capacity for planning that has rarely been documented in wild animals.

Skywalker gibbons (Hoolock tianxing) forage over a range of 1 to 3 square kilometres, feeding on a variety of fruits and leaves.

Pengfei Fan at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, and his colleagues studied two groups of skywalker gibbons in the Gaoligongshan National Nature Reserve in south-west China for around five years. They followed gibbons from the trees where they slept to those …

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